I agree with David Burgess's opinion piece today on the NZ Herald website:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/football-soccer/news/ar...
"Merger would mean death. There is no realistic way you can have a club existing in two countries thousands of kilometres apart, and sooner or later, it would become permanent in Australia.
The only merger the Phoenix should be looking at is with Auckland City, or another Auckland based operation, if there was the cash. That might work, with a few more games in the Queen City — nothing else will."
Another option for NZ investment - Slava Meyn, one of the wealthiest men in Canterbury who has owned a club in his home country Russia and has talked of building a 15,000 seat football stadium in Christchurch.
Meyn has already built a muti-million dollar football academy in Yaldhurst and brought out Johan Cruyff's son-in-law to coach here last week.
He's currently working with Christchurch City Council to expand his football centre and to spend millions adding other sports.
He's said in interviews that his motivation was he was shocked on immigrating to Christchurch (even before the quakes) how poor the sporting facilities were for football and many other sports compared to Russia and Europe.
He prefers living in NZ but found that was one aspect lacking that he could help with.